The year Oliver turned one, something changed in me that was hard to name.
It was not burnout. I had been near burnout before, in the thick of the Sorel situation, and I knew what that felt like. This was different. Less a depletion and more a kind of clarification.
I had been running at maximum capacity for six years. Not without joy, the joy had been consistent and real. But at maximum. Every week full, every commitment honored, every room given everything I had.
I was still doing that. But I was beginning to feel, underneath the fullness, a quiet question. About what I was moving toward rather than what I was managing.
The Senate conversation had been sitting in the background for two years. Not pressing. Not urgent. But present.
I talked to Kade about it properly in February, on a
